


We Wake Eternally

by sasabrina



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, keyleth watches all her friends die, major character death is major, vox machina dies fic, we are leaning into vax being an emo prince
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 01:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20592674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasabrina/pseuds/sasabrina
Summary: Nothing could have truly prepared Keyleth for the burden of a long life.





	We Wake Eternally

> _Death, thou shalt die._
> 
> \- Holy Sonnet X by John Donne 

Grog is the first to go.

It does not take much for the remaining members of Vox Machina to piece everything together. The night he disappeared was one where the full moon shone high and bright. Vex says that the Grey Hunt had been having trouble with a large pack of werewolves in the Parchwood forest. Percy gathers reports that villagers had see Grog enter the forest around midnight, fully decked out and carrying the Dwarven Thrower. 

They find his body, days later, lying among the corpses of some twenty werewolves. Through tears and laughter, Percy tells Keyleth that Grog was found with a huge smile on his face. 

At his funeral, a rowdy affair that put sizeable dent into Whitestone’s alcohol reserves (protocol for a Grand Poobah’s interment), Pike affirms that it was the way Grog had always planned to go.

***

Percy is next. 

His funeral is a matter of state that draws in crowds from all over Tal’Dorei. Dignitaries and heads of principalities all pay their respects to the figurehead of Whitestone. The Lady Vex’ahlia de Rollo leads the mourning among her many children, grandchildren, and a few great grandchildren. Vex, as always, shows much more skin than most people would deem appropriate. But the people who matter do not bat an eyelash, so the rest of the world does not.

After the firing of the guns, Vex tells Keyleth that a masked Vax’ildan had been the one to guide Percy through his passing. 

“The bastard didn’t even say hello,” Vex grumbles.

***

Vex follows her husband much later.

This time, Keyleth is given some warning. The snowdrops that live year round outside her bedroom window in Zephrah all wither and die. The ravens stop coming. This means only one thing to Keyleth: the Champion of the Raven Queen has somewhere much more important to be.

She prepares some things to take to Whitestone. Ava, who had inherited her father’s post as Guard to the Voice of the Tempest, walks through the Sun Tree with her. Emerging from the Tree, Keyleth takes a moment to greet her old friend.

“Hey, Sun Tree.”

“Hey, girl,” drawls the long, soothing voice of the Sun Tree, “how’s it hanging?”

“All my friends are dying, Sun Tree,” Keyleth admits. It is useless to keep secrets from her elders.

“Hey girl, chin up. People come and people go. You just got to roll with it.” 

It is then that Keyleth notices the carpet of snowdrops that cover the ground around the Sun Tree. 

In Whitestone, Julius de Rollo greets her and guides Keyleth to his mother’s room. In his youth, young Julius looked so much like his mother that Keyleth is almost certain this is how Vax would have looked like had he been allowed to grow older. She wonders what they looked like right now, walking arm in arm through the halls of the castle.

“Mother,” Julius says to the figure lying in a grand bed in a room in the southern tower, “Auntie Keyleth is here.”

When Julius leaves, Keyleth takes a moment to take in the figure lying on the bed. Lady Vex’ahlia de Rollo, Baroness of the Third House of Whitestone and Grand Mistress of the Grey Hunt, had aged gracefully. The wrinkles on her face were deep. The hair on her head is long and white. Marks of a life fully-lived, Keyleth thinks.

Vex turned to her with eyes Keyleth knew could no longer see too well. She motions for Keyleth to help her sit up. She is careful to not overburden the bones she knows ache with age.

“Oh Keyleth, dear,” Vex says, her voice clear and strong, “he is coming soon, I can feel it.”

Keyleth smiles. Her eyes fall on the snowdrops arranged in a small vase by Vex’s bedside. As if sensing her gaze, Vex chuckles.

“I’ve been told that they’re growing all over Whitestone. I can hear the ravens by the window every morning. It’s nice to know my brother is still fucking weird.”

Keyleth spends all of her time with Vex and, when they finally come, Scanlan and Pike. They reminisce about the old days. Scanlan sings his rude songs. Pike gets well into her drinks and challenges Keyleth to an arm wrestling match. Keyleth, obliging, turns into a bear to make it a fair fight. Vex laughs and laughs until tears fall down her face.

It is not only them. One by one, Vex’s many descendants and family come in to pay their final respects to their matriarch. There are scholars and adventurers, business people and politicians, there are historians and poets, soldiers and craftsmen. They are all good people. 

Vex, on her own, has brought so much good into the world. Through her offspring, however, she has brought even more.

On one of these days, Keyleth musters the courage to visit the Raven Queen’s sanctum. She stands at the entrance, taking in the thick, vast carpet of snowdrops that surround the minor annex to the castle. 

“It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?” Ava says from her side. The young half-elf is visibly in awe.

“The Raven Queen’s Champion has always had a flair for the dramatic,” Keyleth says.

She lingers for a moment, caught between that space of going and retreating entirely. This is when the door to the Sanctum opens.

A young half elf with white hair is the one who opens the door. She is dressed in all black, the traditional garb of the Raven Queen’s disciples. 

“Oh,” the young woman says in surprise, seeing Keyleth standing at the door, “I did not realize you were there, Voice of the Tempest.” She bows low, her beaded white braids pointing to the ground. Keyleth recognizes her as one of Vex’s grand children.

“I did not realize I was here either,” Keyleth says, unsure of herself. 

“Would you like to come in?” the pale half-elf asks.

“Not particularly,” Keyleth admits, “but I feel like I have to.”

The young woman nods with understanding. She opens the door wider to allow Keyleth to enter.

The inside is surprisingly bare. There are no windows, the entire sanctum lit only by the a few candles that line the walls. A metallic, iron smell wafts gently through the opened doorway as Keyleth and Ava enter. 

As Keyleth walks deeper into the Sanctum, she reaches a large pool. Percy had told Keyleth what was inside the Raven Queen’s temple in Vasselheim. For a moment, Keyleth considers stepping into the pool. 

However, old questions hold her in place. How could such flawed and irrational individuals presume to rule over the universe? How can they claim dominion over nature? No religion had ever been able to answer these questions for Keyleth. So, she stays away from gods and their capricious ways. 

The fact that it was a god who took Keyleth’s heart away is only a bonus.

Keyleth feels the urge to go. She mumbles her apologies to the white-haired cleric and swiftly makes her way out of the Sanctum, breathing in only when she is surrounded by the cold evening air once more.

Vex dies the next evening.

It is a night Keyleth, Pike, and Scanlan all decide to stay up in Vex’s room. Each has a warm mug of cider in hand, happily talking about nothing in particular. 

Then, it happens.

Pike, seated across from Vex’s bed, suddenly goes silent. Sensing the immediate shift in her mood, Scanlan and Keyleth turn around. A sense of dread fills the deepest pits of Keyleth’s stomach as her heart beats with excitement.

A masked, winged figure bends over Vex’s body, caressing her hair.

Scanlan is the first to speak.

“Vax?” he asks.

The figure straightens out to its full height. The long ivory mask shimmers in the faint light of the fireplace. Keyleth squints and sees delicate gold veins forming an intricate pattern across the white mask. The Deathwalker’s Ward glimmers with its own internal light. The large black wings stretch and then fold themselves until they seem to disappear behind the figure’s back. 

“Voice of the Tempest. Champion of the Everlight. Mister Meatman.” the figure says, bowing to each of the seated people in turn.

A small voice, barely audible, comes from the bed. “You never learn do you, Scrawny? Go talk to them.”

The figure takes off its mask. 

Keyleth does not hide her gasp of surprise. Vax looks exactly the same as he did when she last saw him in Dalen’s Closet. Exactly the same as he did when the Raven Queen took him. For a moment, Keyleth loses each year, almost a century since, she had lived without Vax’ildan. She feels her spine rise a little straighter. The dull ache that had bloomed in her knee dissolved into nothing. She can feel the skin on her face tightening. All of a sudden, she feels younger. Her past has returned.

All Keyleth wants to do is kiss Vax’ildan. Her impulsive rogue. Her winged paladin. _ Hers _.

But Vax does not move from where he stands on the other side of Vex’s bed. He considers each and every one of them with distant eyes and a formal air. Keyleth glances at Vex’ahlia with her white hair, heavily wrinkled skin, and withered bones. They had once looked alike, these twins. They were once inseparable. It had taken death and a god to change that.

Keyleth wonders, as she often does, who between her and Vex suffered the bigger tragedy. 

“I have come here for my sister,” Vax says in a voice that sounds both near and so very far away. “I shall not see you for many years to come. Please,” he looks pointedly at Scanlan, “do not go looking for me. It displeases the Matron and makes my job infinitely more difficult.” Keyleth thinks she hears a shade of humor in the last statement.

A moment passes.

“Oh Vax, we miss you so much,” Pike says.

Vax smirks good-naturedly. “I am always with you. So long as your heart beats with love for each other, I am there.”

Keyleth feels her heart catch against the corner of his mouth.

“But you have always had my heart,” she says, arguing the point.

Vax turns to look at her for the first time since he appeared. Keyleth fights the urge to cry.

“So it seems,” he says, “I still cherish it so.”

At his words, it all returns to Keyleth. The eternal snowdrops in Zephrah. The ravens that always find their way to her, especially on her darkest days. The warm caress of the wind whenever her heart shivers. She has always known that even between the folds of the planes, Vax keeps her. But it means something to hear him say it. 

***

After Vex’s death, Keyleth throws herself into her work. At the top of her long list of priorities is the selection of a successor.

She selects a young halfling named Raidon Loraharis among the Air Ashari’s students. While he excels in the rigorous training it takes to prepare for the Aramenté, Raidon’s talents lie in healing and the mysterious art of crafting dreams. 

“Keyleth,” Raidon says to her one day, “do your dreams trouble you?”

Keyleth considers the question. 

“I do not dream,” she informs her young apprentice.

***

Scanlan dies entertaining a crowd.

In the later years of his life, the bard takes to singing _ The Song of Vox Machina _, an original composition, to usher in Winter’s Crest. He starts this tradition in Whitestone and then, when he had grown too old to make the journey, in Westruun. It is an incredibly long song that begins at sundown the night before Winter’s Crest and ends at dawn. The performance draws in crowds from all over Exandria year after year. It is a rowdy affair. While Scanlan sings, the guests indulge in food, carousing, and lots and lots of alcohol. 

Keyleth, having relinquished her duties as Headmaster to Raidon, enjoys this performance every year.

It is an elaborate spectacle that features magical illusions, mechanical figures, and very real guns (or so Scanlan claims). It is a story of daring deeds, death, and defecation. Scanlan plays all their parts. Pike thinks it is woefully inaccurate. Keyleth loves it. Neither can stand from laughter the first time Scanlan performs it or any year since.

It is after one of these performances that Scanlan’s heart stops beating.

“I think,” Pike says after she performs the final rites on Scanlan’s body, “his work is finally complete.”

Keyleth, who can’t stop giggling despite the situation, nods in agreement.

***

It is Kaylie who writes to Keyleth upon Pike’s death.

Keyleth does not attend Pike’s funeral. She decides that the idea of being surrounded by disciples of Sarenrae makes her uneasy. But, in the moments she is truly honest with herself, it is the thought that her worst fear has finally come true that keeps her from saying her last goodbye.

She is the last. The survivor. The only living soul.

It hits her harder than she thought it would. Harder than she had prepared for. She weeps night after night. When she does not weep, she finds herself humming Scanlan’s song under her breath. But there is no one to hear her. 

That night, Keyleth dreams for the first time in as long as she can recall.

She is in the dining hall in Greyskull Keep. Laina is running to and from the kitchen bringing out dish after dish of sumptuous food. As she wonders who this food is all for, Tiberius enters the dining hall, adjusting his glasses.

“Ah, your Highness,” he says when he sees Keyleth, “you’re early for dinner! Well, as it should be, I say. You’ll want to get the best of the boar before Grog comes in.”

As if on cue, the goliath stomps into the room, beard fuller than Keyleth ever remembered it being. 

“Is that boar? Uh-mazing!” Grog says as he takes a seat at the table and begins digging in.

The rest of Vox Machina come in for dinner one by one. Percy, then Vex and Trinket, and then Scanlan. After Scanlan comes Pike, who takes the seat closest to Keyleth. They are all eating and drinking happily together, talking about something Keyleth cannot quite understand. Instead, she revels in this closeness and lets the familiar feeling of companionship, of _ belonging _, wash over her.

“Keyleth,” Pike says to her, “I miss you so very much.”

Keyleth looks at Pike. 

“I’m sorry, Pike,” Keyleth says, “I just couldn’t bear it.”

Pike nods, understanding. She stands on the bench and gives Keyleth a hug. Keyleth can feel the warmth envelope her neck. She can smell the scent of sweat and incense. She can smell Pike.

“Of course, Keyleth. Just, anything you’re comfortable with. I…” Pike looks around, “_ we _ all want you to be happy.”

Suddenly, every eye at the table turns to Keyleth. Their smiles are warm and their faces are young. Keyleth looks down at the hand Pike is still holding. 

_ Wrinkled. _

It is then that she feels a heaviness on both her shoulders. Two hands, warm and calloused, gently stroke the base of her neck. She feels warm breath tickle her ear.

“Hello, Kiki.” The voice makes a shiver run down her spine.

She grabs one of the hands on her shoulder. The hand feels warm and real. She threads her fingers through the hand and turns around.

Vax smiles at her in a way no one has since he left.

Keyleth kisses Vax. She cannot help herself. She drinks in his warmth, the feeling of his wet mouth against hers, his hair under her fingers. She kisses him until his hands find their way around her waist. Until he pulls her body closer to him. She kisses until all her world is Vax.

When Keyleth wakes, her large bed feels warm all around.

***

Keyleth selects a day in spring.

There is nothing to bring. Everything she owns has either been returned or passed on. Everything that is dear to her waits on the other side.

She had bid the people of Zephrah farewell the day before. Today is for her alone. As she rises from her bed, she feels her bones creek—aged by the thousand years she’s lived.

She wears her simplest garments, not unlike the clothes she wore when she first started adventuring. She carries a simple staff. Only to help her hunched and frail body remain upright. 

She makes the walk to the raven tree before day breaks. She reaches it as the golden rays of first light caress its highest leaves. Keyleth chuckles at the state of the tree, its branches bent under the burden of the ravens that crowd in it.

Keyleth begins casting the spell she knows all too well. For the first time, however, she does not specify a destination. That matter, she leaves to the earth. It knows better than she does where she must go. 

When the spell is complete, the familiar portal opens at the tree’s heart. Keyleth does not waste her time. Her hunched form hobbles into the tree. She walks towards the dark speck in the distance that appears to grow larger the deeper into the tree she goes. 

_ At last. _

She reaches out towards the figure. A familiar hand grasps hers and pulls her into a warm embrace. 

“Welcome home, my love.” 

As the warmth and darkness surround her, Keyleth hears the symphony of hundreds of ravens taking to the sky. Their wings beat like thunder. They chant their call in unison. One last chorus for her final flight.

Their charge, like hers, is finally over. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is my first Vox Machina fic (aside from the VM-inspired poetry I write) and I had a lot of fun writing this even if it did entail killing all of my favorite characters. Again, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
